Hospital employees squeezed as pay dries up

His wife is eight months pregnant with the couple's first child. In just a few days he will mark his first anniversary on the job at a local hospital.

But Lucio said Monday that he hasn't been paid for a month, his last paycheck bounced and on Sunday he was furloughed for a week. When he went to work Monday to plead for a layoff so he could get unemployment compensation, Lucio said, his employers at Newport Specialty Hospital refused.

To top things off, rumors are swirling among employees that the hospital's parent company has stopped paying its health insurance premiums. Lucio told his wife to apply for Medi-Cal.

"I can't risk having this insurance not go through," he said.

The parent company, Tustin-based Pacific Health Corp., has not specifically responded to complaints by employees that they haven't been paid. In answer to four emailed questions from the Register about payroll issues, Pacific Health spokeswoman Jamie H. Yoo gave the same answer:

The California Department of Industrial Relations fined Pacific Health $7 million last month for bouncing paychecks and issuing employees inaccurate wage statements. The state said the company deducted money from employees' wages for fringe benefits and then failed to pay premiums, causing insurance coverage to be cancelled.

The state levied the fines for conduct in September 2012 and in February.

But employees interviewed by the Register this week say the company resumed withholding paychecks and sometimes bouncing paychecks in March.

Gene Titensky, an information technology associate at Newport Specialty Hospital, gave two weeks notice on April 3 but was furloughed on Monday. Around November of last year, he said, the company created a "hardship list" to determine who got paid first.

Human Resources "would determine who was paid, if you were one of the first 30 or the first 10," Titensky said.

"You literally had to go in and humiliate yourself to go on the hardship list," said Danny Flores, the head of purchasing management at the Tustin and Anaheim hospitals. To make the hardship list, Flores said he told the company he couldn't pay his car registration, his house payment or taxes or buy groceries for his three children, ages 5, 9 and 19.

Flores said he had not been paid for a month before he was furloughed this week. He was then paid Monday afternoon after telling his boss he was talking to the Register.

Without a regular paycheck, Lucio, 42, is about to be evicted from his Santa Ana home. He and his wife plan to move in with his parents. He has maxed out two credit cards. He owns a 1962 Chevy Impala, a classic, "and I have to sell it just to stay afloat."

Gena Leon worked in medsurge, monitoring adult patients for heart rhythms at Newport Specialty. She resigned April 1, she said, after the company failed to deliver her paycheck on March 29.

"They are paying some people," Leon said. "One friend went to H.R., opened up and cried. They paid her."

Leon's mother, Millie Estrada, said she had to max out her credit card to help pay her daughter's expenses and take care of her 5-year-old granddaughter.